I Was Trying to Find Myself. I Didn't

Isolation in the Greek Islands. Struggles with the nature of fame. Industrial Gospel music. Sessions of “complete reckless abandon”. At home in Eau Claire, Justin Vernon reveals the complicated story of the third Bon Iver album to Stephen Deusner.

- Stephen Deusner

JUSTIN Vernon thought about playing air guitar at his own Eaux Claires music and arts festival. He wanted to debut 22, A Million, the new Bon Iver album, but wasn’t sure how to do it. “I didn’t want to play the songs live,” he says. “I just wanted to play this album that we had spent so many years making. How do we do this? Do we play in the morning? Should we just play the album and air-guitar it? In hindsight, we should have done that.”

In August, thousands of fans made the trek into Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to see the city’s favourite son take the stage. Along with Bryce Dessner of The National, Vernon is one of the festival’s co-founders and curators, and in its short history, he has established something like a tradition of premiering songs at the event, which takes place in the woods west of town. “It was a good opportunity, but to be honest, it was uncomfortable because it’s the opposite of what I like doing. Eaux Claires is very much not about me and my band. It’s really, truly about this whole other thing, this community and all this other music. But it was too good an idea to pass up. When do you get to do that?”